BREAKING: CMS heading back to school

In-person/remote instruction to start Nov. 2 for K-5, Nov. 23 for grades 6-8, Jan. 5 for high school; 1 week at school, 2 weeks at home until further notice; PLUS: Board members in their own words

Sep 17, 2020

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Board votes 6-3 to go with ‘hybrid’ online/in-person learning; Too slow of a return?

by Tony Mecia and Cristina Bolling

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools will start to open classrooms to students on Nov. 2 — but it’s likely to be months until all students are back full-time.

The school board voted 6-3 late Wednesday for a plan by Superintendent Earnest Winston that will reintroduce students to in-person instruction on a rotating basis, with one week at school followed by two weeks of virtual instruction. That means that schools will be operating at 1/3 of their capacity to ensure social distancing.

So when are your kids going back?

K-5 students will return the weeks of Nov. 2 to Nov. 16.
Grades 6-8 will return the weeks of Nov. 23 to Dec. 2.
High school students will return the week of Dec. 14 for testing, then return for instruction the weeks of Jan. 5 to Jan. 18.

Pre-K will start Oct. 12.

Here’s the chart:

Three board members — Sean Strain, Margaret Marshall and Rhonda Cheek — voted against the plan because they wanted a more accelerated timetable of returning students to class. Some high school students might not set foot in a classroom for instruction until mid-January, which is four months away.

But Winston said it was a measured and sensible approach.

“We must balance that urgency with proceeding deliberately and with an abundance of caution,” he said. “We are on our way to doing that.”

He said district staff had worked hard on plans and collaborated with teachers, employees, parents and community members, but that returning to school is not risk-free: “There is almost no scenario by which any school district or other organization can protect from all risk, especially with a disease so new as to have so many unknowns. What I can say is our team has worked to mitigate risk as much as possible.”

Here’s the link to the full 37-page PowerPoint presented to the board.

Busy with preparations: In a meeting that lasted more than four hours, CMS staff members said that they have been working to ensure that schools are ready before students arrive, by taking measures such as ensuring schools have the needed material and equipment and that classrooms are set up for social distancing.

CMS staff members outlined changes big and small that students and parents would experience when in-school instruction resumes, such as grouping students differently to cut down on transitions between classes, having parents sign a form before their child boards a bus that says they haven’t been sick, ordering gallon jugs of hand sanitizer for each classroom and placing cups at water fountains.

Balancing act, little guidance: Public health experts have generally said the need to keep students and teachers away from large groups that might spread Covid should be balanced against educational opportunities and health and wellness factors such as mental well-being and proper nutrition. But nobody has really devised guidelines for local districts on when it is safe to return students to the classroom.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention lists dozens of factors to consider — most having to do with school readiness and procedures. On the prevalence of Covid, the guidelines merely say that administrators “make decisions that take into account the level of community transmission.”

Other cities in the Southeast have been making similar moves:

Schools in Atlanta plan to return starting in mid-October.
Nashville schools are phasing students back to class between Oct. 13 and Jan. 7.
Schools in Jacksonville, Fla., are returning middle and high school students to classrooms by the end of this month, after starting K-5 students in hybrid learning to start the year in August.

The risks: Children are less likely than adults to catch and spread Covid, and they are less likely to experience severe symptoms and death. Statewide, out of more than 3,100 Covid deaths since March, just one was in somebody aged 0-17, according to state statistics. Of course, children can still spread the virus to others, including family members and teachers.

In July, the school board voted to go with fully online instruction, saying the district was not ready for students to return and expressing concern about the spread of the coronavirus. The district had nearly 150,000 students last year, and about 1/3 of those opted to commit to a fully online option for the entire first semester.

Staffing changes: One other area of concern for CMS was the status of its employees. CMS staff said they have moved thousands of workers into new jobs such as tech support and inventory. Under the plan, about 140 workers are at risk of full furlough and 1,225 at risk of a partial furlough. Some could take effect as early as next week. CMS also said it would offer supervised remote learning at schools for staff members with children in grades K-8, which will help staff return to work.

Covid numbers improving: Almost every indicator of Covid transmission in Mecklenburg County has declined steadily since late July. But county health director Gibbie Harris warned county commissioners this week that local cases could rise because of parties, the Labor Day holiday and university students possibly returning to classes.

CMS officials cautioned that there will be positive cases at schools, and they will make decisions on closing schools on a case-by-case basis. This week, one of Charlotte’s largest private schools, Charlotte Catholic, said it would go all-virtual for the rest of the week after four students tested positive, the Ledger reported online on Wednesday. It plans to resume full in-person classes Sept. 28.

In their own words

Here’s what school board members and the superintendent had to say Wednesday night, as they voted 6-3 to return students to class starting Nov. 2:

Superintendent Earnest Winston

We are here today closer than every before to the return to in-person instruction … We will take a phased approach that demonstrates caution, courage and compassion. I want to thank my team for their tireless work in developing a comprehensive, well-thought-out and data-driven plan. …
We remain in unprecedented times with a health crisis unlike any we have faced in our lifetimes. Information changes seemingly every month. But here is what we know: Having our students and teachers together in classrooms is the best way to ensure equity in educational opportunity. …
We know having students back in our schools for in-person instruction will result in the best outcomes. We do so with the health and safety of staff, families and students as our highest priority.
Does that mean we have eliminated all risk? I could not appear before you and maintain integrity if I said so. There is almost no scenario for which any school district or other organization can protect from all risk, especially with a disease so new as to have so many unknowns. What I can say is that our team has worked diligently to mitigate risk as much as possible. …
There is no plan for a return to in-person instruction that that will make our entire community happy, just as there was no plan for reopening schools in August that would have.
What we present today is a thoughtful approach that we believe strikes a balance, keeping the health and safety of all as the highest priority, realizing that the audience of students we serve is best served when they have time in our classrooms.

VOTED IN FAVOR

Lenora Shipp:

I believe that this plan and the way it will be phased in is a good, smooth, effective, efficient phase-in, especially as we look at the first quarter that is just about to end. The teaching and learning and the grading and the transition for students needs to be smooth.

Carol Sawyer:

While we are laying out a plan … the continued success of that plan depends upon the community metrics and the health of our staff and the health of our students. So this is not a plan that is inviolate. It will change if conditions change. I hope that they won’t … but we will be reviewing these on a regular basis.

Thelma Byers-Bailey:

This is a plan that has listened to two different … opinions within our community — one that has been pounding the table saying, “We needed to go back to school two months ago,” and the other that is shaking in their boots saying, “No, not yet. No, not yet. No, not yet.” I think this plan gives both groups, both camps, an opportunity to move into this new phase of our education with measure and caution and an opportunity to re-adjust their attitude toward what we are about to do.

Jennifer De La Jara:

I think we’ve made great strides both in the district and in our community. I know back in July at our meeting, we didn’t have PPE then. We had concerns and questions about our staffing; whole transportation teams that had to be out on quarantine because they had been exposed. … Tonight, we saw how we are overcoming our HR challenges. I’m feeling really great about how many obstacles we’ve overcome and how that changes things. …
This is not set in stone in the sense that this doesn’t mean we can’t come back two weeks from now if we have a huge uptick and change this altogether because the metrics informs staff and informs us that these would be the recommended necessary changes.

VOTED AGAINST

Margaret Marshall:

I had hoped that by Oct. 19 we would begin this process and have students walking into our buildings, and I had hopes that this transition period would be shorter. It’s with a heavy heart. I do want students to go back in some form or fashion. I cannot support right now this particular calendar recommendation, because I do think it should be sped up and condensed.
I think that we will still accomplish the goals of keeping folks safe because we have divided people up into three groups. I think that the precautions that we’ve taken in our buildings will be a great thing and I think we will be prepared by that time.

Sean Strain:

Time and again we are told that teaching and learning plays best in our classrooms. And that our students are impacted across the board by continued remote learning, but some more so than others. … We’ve talked about the inequity of remote learning. So that drives a bit of urgency around action. … And as I look at this proposed plan, I don’t see that urgency. Which brings me to courage. And I ask the question, “Where?”
There’s a big difference between recklessness and measured risk and reward. … The case for continuing the mandated remote learning hasn’t been made. I look at this and I think to myself, “Why aren’t we putting these kids back into our classrooms as quickly as possible?” It’s not reckless. It’s not only responsible, but it’s necessary.

Rhonda Cheek:

This timeline is not what I wanted. I want our kids back in class. I thought Oct. 19 was the most reasonable time to do that because that is the beginning of the second quarter. It’s a reset for kids; it’s a reset to be reorganized. Based on our dashboard, we could go back Monday the 21st of September because we’re in yellow on all the things that we said that were important to us: under 6% positivity, all of the numbers are in the yellow.
There is not an easy solution … each choice that we could make faces challenges. We are getting emails continuously from parents that want us to stay in full remote, that want us to go back tomorrow, that want us to go back next week. … Our most fragile students, I think, are our elementary [students] and I really did want to get them back sooner. … I have asked for us to put forth a return-to-school plan but unfortunately this is not what I expected, and much of the rationale that I have heard based on why we’re doing this is not because of things that were in that dashboard and readiness issues. For that reason, my vote will not be supporting this version of a return to school plan.

Back to school: Classrooms start to open Nov. 2.

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Executive editor: Tony Mecia; Managing editor: Cristina Bolling; Contributing editor: Tim Whitmire; Reporting intern: David Griffith

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